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As you may have noticed, we’ve started carrying some articles relating to the forthcoming General and Local Elections that are taking place on Thursday, May 7. It’s a crucial time, with polls and experts both predicting a national result that is too close to call. What we do know is that your vote really will matter. It really will.

Head back in time to September 1979: Star Wars mania was in full flight across the UK as the classic George Lucas film had gripped the world’s imagination. The sequel was just months away from release and Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, was a hero. Having faced off against the fearsome Darth Vader, he sided with not a Phantom Menace …

It’s midnight. All is quiet as people wait in their pews, expectantly. A bell rings – Christmas Day has started. The organ strikes up with – what else? – It Came Upon The Midnight Clear. The heady smell of insense wafts delicately through the building as the priests process through the ancient, beautiful building. What could be more Christmassy?

A mysterious Punch and Judy man, two trainee priests and a train journey home to start the Christmas holidays. It’s all straightforward until a lost ticket and a chance conversation reveal that the wolves are running and a dastardly plot to spoil Christmas is under way.

Defeat against Italy last night means England face an uphill struggle to win Group D, but as long as they win their next two games, it’s still possible. Roy Hodgson’s team next play on Thursday night, this time against Uruguay.

Makers of the hit BBC show Doctor Who are once again snubbing Reading. The town is omitted from a list of stops for a worldwide tour this August – which means that once again the Daleks are bypassing the Thames Valley in their quest to take over the galaxy.

Xn is impartial. We won’t ever tell you how to vote, what to think or what to do, unless it’s who to vote for in Britain’s Got Talent (well done Jon, see you at Christmas). But 20 million meals given out in just 12 months? A staggering one in six children living in poverty? There are no (printable) words to …